By Dave McCoy
MSN Movies

May 23, 2006

In my first Cannes dispatch, I commented on how the city enjoys parading its open sexuality. Little did I know at the time how much that, um, openness would spread into the festival. Outside of "The Da Vinci Code" and "X-Men: The Last Stand," everything I've seen here has featured a ton of provocative, graphic sex, with many scenes I've never witnessed in any movie (yes, porn included).

And yet, very little of it is titillating stuff. Films like "Red Road," "Taxidermia," "Fast Food Nation" and "Babel" (which I'll write about in complete, adoring detail tomorrow) present vivid sex as a time-filler, or worse, extensions of deep psychosis and pain. But none of them come close to what John Cameron Mitchell serves up in "Shortbus."

Many of you may remember Mitchell's first play, performance, soundtrack and cult musical, "Hedwig and the Angry Inch." Since then, Mitchell has spent years creating "Shortbus." He put ads out in New York papers, asking for actors willing to get it on on film. He then worked with the actors on a script, and now the result makes its debut at Cannes. "Shortbus" is definitely not for everyone, and I'd bet my left kidney that, outside of N.Y., S.F., L.A. and festivals, America will never see it on a big screen. But I really dug it. It's very funny, a bit hyperbolic, and surprisingly, it sneaks up on you to deliver an emotional wallop during — what else? — a life-affirming musical number at the conclusion.

The film follows half-a-dozen or so New Yorkers who all frequent an outrageous underground club called Shortbus. It's an anything-goes affair, and each character attends seeking something. One gay couple is looking to open their relationship; a married sex therapist frustratedly tries to find a way to her first orgasm; and a dominatrix shows up seeking any kind of intimate connection that doesn't involve whips, humiliation and the exchange of cash. The movie deftly interweaves these lives with nifty animation sequences and, well, lots of screwing. Almost all of what I saw I can't print here, but I can offer you my favorite line of dialogue from the festival so far. Upon showing a woman the orgy room at Shortbus, ringmaster Justin Bond (in a hilariously campy performance) nods towards the mass of naked, moving bodies and sighs, "Look, it's like the '60s ... minus the hope."

Hope is something completely missing from Bruno Dumont's latest gut-punch, "Flandres." The French enfant terrible behind such emotionally taxing art-house films as "L'Humanité," "The Life of Jesus" and "Twentynine Palms" isn't known for his subtlety. Characters in his films usually reside in the isolated French countryside and are born to suffer. They have sex to temporarily kill boredom, or use it as their only means of power. Tenderness, love or even pleasure is never part of the equation, just a brief release from hell on Earth. Happy stuff, eh? Yeah, well, Dumont's topped all of that by sending his miserable boys off to war in "Flandres." While the boys are away, fighting in some unnamed Middle Eastern country, the lonely girls wait at home for them and lose their minds. Xanax should have been passed out at the press screening of this one. Was it affecting? Yes, though not as brilliant as "L'Humanité," which remains one of the best films of the past five to 10 years. Did I learn anything Dumont hadn't already showed me, or that "Full Metal Jacket" and "Casualties of War" hadn't taught me about war? Not really. I just don't think I want to have sex in the French countryside, though.

This movie is fascin... zzzzzzzzzz

There wasn't sex in Aki Kaurismäki's latest, "Lights in the Dusk." Or if there was, I missed. It usually happens to me once at every film festival: I fall asleep. And somewhere in the middle of "Lights in the Dusk," right as a crucial sequence occurred, I nodded off. I wasn't bored with the Finnish director's latest meditation on loneliness and cruel fate, but those looooooong takes and that gray Finnish sky, combined with an average of four to five hours of sleep a night ... well, sorry, I wish I could tell you more about it, but I was done. Mr. Kaurismäki, I find your other films fascinating and promise to catch up with this one when I have more coffee inside me.

Lock out

It took a week, but I finally got shut out of a screening. One of the big attractions of Cannes is the Marche, or market, where filmmakers bring their movies and screen them in hopes of getting distribution. There are literally thousands of movies screened in the Marche during the festival, and you need to buy a pricey pass to attend. If, for some reason, the theater doesn't fill, the press and those with invitations can get in.

I was stunned to look at the Marche schedule and see Michel Gondry's latest, "The Science of Sleep," listed. This is the director whose "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" wowed audiences only a few years back. But apparently his latest didn't sell at Sundance and now he's hawking it in some dingy multiplex tucked at the back of a seedy alley a few blocks off the Croisette. Ah, the Olympia Theater, how I hate thee. The screening was set for a third-floor screening room. A group of us waited there for over an hour, and the temperatures hit the triple digits. The handrail is the only thing that prevented me from going down. Of course, we were shut out, but I did manage to hear my favorite quote of the festival. As a hopeless fellow badge-holder watched distributor after distributor go in before us, he finally said to one, "Hey, man. Can you do me a favor and buy this movie and then screen it tomorrow, so I can see it? I can lend you 10 Euros..."

Ah, Cannes ... sometimes the patrons are as entertaining as the films.

A demain...

What Cannes selection interests you most? Write us at heymsn@microsoft.com.

Dave McCoy is lead editor for MSN Movies.